I agree with your perspective on our social/cultural "matrix". It's amazing how much we take for granted and how deeply ingrained these constructs are in our everyday lives.

I used to gloss over the words representing "constructs" as I had used in my last sentence. I finally groked what was being referred to while listening to some lectures by Alan Watts during my recent sabbatical from burnout.

He was able to explain the differences between eastern and western philosophy in a way that made me see things in a completely different light. It was like waking up from the matrix.

Since then, I've been constantly aware of the constructed nature of reality and have had to re-evaluate many of my assumptions. For example, just learning that words are just abstractions and don't always accurately reflect reality was something I had never considered before. Now I try to be more careful with my word selection, but nobody's prefect :)